


Excuses

by Le_Chien_Bleu



Category: The Libertines
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 15:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4226316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Le_Chien_Bleu/pseuds/Le_Chien_Bleu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the times they wrote songs together, and the times they didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excuses

**_A room by the river, 1997ish_ **

 

‘That’s _not_ what it means.’

Peter regards the blue eyed boy who looks like he’s about to punch him.  He has been cross since the moment he arrived – striding in an hour late, looking as rumpled as his leather jacket, about which Peter has gallantly said nothing – all coiled up and sharp like a spring.  He is just waiting for him to snap on his fingers.

Carlos Ashley Raphael Barat.  Ever since he learned the name from his sister, he has looped its curves in his journals, trying to get the measure of it and the man it belongs to. 

‘It’s  _exactly_ what it means.  Call yourself a student,’ huffs Peter, only half playing at being annoyed now.  He is starting to despair of them ever writing generation-inspiring melody and verse, when they can’t even agree on a single word.

He has tried playing Carl  _The Long Song_ , his treasured first creation, but gives up after the first six minutes.  Carl waits until he has definitely stopped and then says: ‘Well, that was… accurately titled.’  Peter wonders if he has made a terrible mistake placing so much hope in this dark eyed stranger. 

Then Carl plays him something, fingers moving over frayed strings, teasing and tricking them into spirals of melody, and Peter decides that he got it right the first time.

‘Means preposterous, doesn’t it?’  The words are sulky and twisted around the umpteenth cigarette in the boy’s mouth.

Carl has a bulldog’s grip on their argument, and he cannot see any way to drag it from the boy’s gritted teeth.  And just now, Peter can’t quite resist lighting another spark of anger in those blue fires.

‘ _You’re_ preposterous.’ 

It’s not quite the level of verbal riposte that Peter generally aspires to, but in this case he stands by it.  Carl Barat is like nothing he has ever seen.   Sea foam eyes that swirl and break like waves; dark silk hair just slightly too long, curling over his collar.  Peter wants to tangle his hands in it and pull.  He tries to focus on the task at hand.  ‘Use it in a sentence, then, genius.’

‘Yes, miss,’ mocks Carl.  Which is unfortunate, because it fills Peter’s head with images of him draped over a school desk, awaiting correction.  ‘Your approach to writing music is  _preponderant_ .’

‘Why, thank you.  Yours is distinctly ponderous.  And writing songs is the  _preponderant_ reason for our being here.’  That, thinks Peter, and the fact that this mysterious friend of his sister’s has been haunting his thoughts and dreams for months.  Ever since they started exchanging tentative scribbled letters and the odd drunken phone call.  In both, Carl is all words and no commitment.  Peter tells himself he really shouldn’t be surprised that he is the same in person.

‘Right.  That’s it.’  Carl gets up abruptly and Peter wonders if he is about to walk out.  He has been expecting it since about three seconds after the stormy eyed boy stumbled in, long after he’d lost hope of him ever showing up.  In fact, Carl is just reaching up to the top of the bookcase for a dictionary.  Peter takes the opportunity to admire the decadent swell of the near-perfect rear displayed before him, showcased in tight denim – after all, he muses, be rude not to.

Carl makes him feel like every punk love song he has ever heard; sticky words and rough, clashing guitars, dirty thoughts and fingers.

He must be able to feel Peter staring because he pauses in his page turning to give him another death stare.  Peter just widens his eyes and does his best choirboy impression, trying to suggest that he definitely wasn’t just ogling his new bandmate’s arse.  He doesn’t think that he’s quite getting away with it.  Time for some distraction then.

‘So, what do I get when I win?’

Blue eyes assess him, weighing up violence against amusement.

‘What do you want?’

‘We-ell.  If you’re so confident, how about a free pass?  If I’m right – which I definitely am – I can make you do anything I want.  No complaints.’

He is fairly certain that Carl can read the possibilities flashing through his brain like a fruit machine.  And he is almost sure that he’s blushing, face as pink as Peter knows his own cheeks must be.

‘Fine.’  The word escapes through gritted teeth, and Peter is not sure which of them looks more surprised.

He is, of course, right.  Carl looks resigned when he lets the heavy book fall closed on the floor.  He lets Peter guide him over to the bed and push him down, every muscle rigid and furious. 

Peter wonders if he is imagining the disappointment on the boy’s face when he places a guitar into his hands.

‘Come on, Carlos, we’re going to write a song.  That’s what I want you to do.’

Alone, in his own bed – as dawn moodily shoves away the last grey tendrils of night time – Peter thinks about all the other things he could have done and said.  He tries to convince himself that he made the right choice.

* * * *

**_Delaney Mansions, 1998_ **

 

Carl is on his back.  Best place for him, as far as Peter is concerned.  He is staring one-eyed at the ceiling as if he doesn’t trust it to stay still.

‘Pe-teeer.  Stoooop.’

‘Stop what  _now_ ?’ sighs Peter.  In the last hour, he has had to stop saying Carl’s name (because it sounds sarcastic), keeping the windows shut so that they don’t die of pneumonia (because Carl is too hot, despite having shed all his clothes down to his boxers), having the lights on (hurts Carl’s precious eyes), writing anything down (the scratchy sounds of biro on paper), and  _stop fucking looking at me like that_ (Peter knows  _like what_ exactly, but refutes it on principle).  He suspects that breathing will be next on Carl’s list of things for Peter to stop.

‘Stop the noise,’ whines Carl pitifully.  He glares at Peter’s fingers on the guitar strings, as if he is taking every note personally.  ‘You’re making my brain all bendy.’

‘I’m pretty sure that’s the ropey speed, Carlos.  Told you not to trust that boy, he had a metal bar through his eyebrow.  Deliberately.’

His friend is already taking the concept of ‘writing some songs together’ very loosely indeed.  Carl’s main contribution so far has been to distract Peter from the job in hand by shedding his clothes in a lying-down-striptease. 

Peter had watched the boy’s struggles – sharp hips arching off the bed as he tried to escape his trousers, huffing and squirming as became entangled in the sleeves of his shirt – and thought that an inebriated musician picking a fight with his own outfit really shouldn’t be this arousing.

With a will of steel, Peter had dragged himself back to the promised song writing.  But he isn’t sure how he is supposed to carry on if he is not allowed to actually touch a guitar.

‘Noo, s’not the speed.  It’s you.  Always you.  Can’t think straight with you breathing down my neck all the time.’

‘Nowhere near your bloody neck,’ he mutters.  ‘Anyway, not sure you’ve ever thought straight in your life,’ he adds to himself, declining to repeat it when Carl glares at him.

‘C’mere.’

It is an order, issued with the lazy arrogance of a Roman Emperor reclining after a feast.  But underneath it is a sliver of uncertainty; Carl tips his face away and won’t look directly at him.  Peter feels such a sharp rush of affection that he obeys.

There is an awkward shuffle and tangle of limbs as Carl pulls him down onto the mattress. In moments, the boy is wrapped tightly around him; he shivers under the press of hot bare skin all over him, the rib cage jostling his own, wet breath nuzzling into his neck.  He is too distracted to notice at first, but then he feels Carl hard and hot against his thigh.

His hips buck forward, seeking out Carl’s heat, without consulting his brain.  Both boys gasp as they make contact.  The friction jolts sharp and electric up his spine and he feels Carl squirm against him in mirrored pleasure. 

He sighs and tries to force his thoughts to stop screaming.  Songs, he tells himself, they were supposed to be writing songs.  He is impressed by the lengths his friend will go to, in order to escape writing a middle eight. 

‘Peter,’ rasps the boy, low and desperate.  And fuck the songs, because he would do anything to hear that sound again.  He rolls his hips into the body pressed against him again, delighting in the answering groan.  Peter decides to abandon any hope of resisting the nearly naked boy writhing in his arms.

‘Peter, stooop.’  And he thinks that he might have to kill Carl, or himself.  God knows why the boy is protesting though, his cock still digging hotly into Peter’s hip.  Carl squirms and moans again at the pressure. ‘Stop… stopping.’

He lets go of the breath he was holding in a huff of laughter; his frozen hips melt into the boy still locked tightly around him.  Carl untangles himself enough to bring his mouth up to Peter’s, and he is almost sorry to lose the desperate moans that were shivering down his spine.  But Carl’s tongue twists into his mouth, wrapping up in his own and silencing any protest.

Peter finds that, just now, he really doesn’t care too much about writing songs.

* * * *

 

**_Paris_ ** **_, 2003_**

 

‘Thought you wanted to write songs.’  Carl’s sulking thickens his mumble, smearing the words like jam.

Peter tries not to laugh or cry at the hypocrisy.  He has spent the last thousand years or so trying to pin Carl down and drag the music out of him.  Now, he sits there muttering into the collar of his jacket, shoulders hunched and sulky, as if Peter has been the evasive one.

Carl never likes him having other friends.  He had peered into the back of the car this morning, en route to the ferry, as if it contained an alien rather than Peter’s friend.  Lars is coming with them to record the sound, Peter had explained patiently.   _Always a job for whoever’s carrying the brown, eh_ , muttered Carl as he had crawled into the borrowed banger, tucking his jacket tightly around him as if Lars had fleas (which Peter is almost certain he doesn’t). 

This petty jealousy is another streak of blazing unfairness; at the first glimmer of fame, Carl had waged a one-man campaign to befriend every indie tosser in London.  He likes an entourage, Barat, just so long as they are his people.   _Peter’s people_ – and Carl has taken great pains to make this perfectly clear – his people are scum, that Carl wouldn’t touch with the scuffed toe of his brogues. 

Of course, for all the words he will say – slaughtering and sodomising the English language with those pouting lips and lying tongue – Carl will never admit what he really wants.  So he is upset because they are supposed to be writing songs, not because he has to share Peter’s attention with someone else for thirty seconds.

Peter has never needed his friend’s words.  He knows why Carl is sulking and it has nothing to do with artistic endeavour.  The boy had doubtlessly assumed that their Paris writing getaway would be nothing but a long, dirty weekend.  Despite the girl whom he insists he is so desperate to get back to.

Peter knows how his boy’s brain works.  He can imagine exactly how Carlos had planned to ensnare him with soft words and tempting touches, bend and break Peter until he surrenders to his will again.  They are both play-acting so much of the time, caught up in the roles they have cast each other in.  Touching has become the only honest thing between them; he can feel the pure love and hate in every kiss, punch, fuck.

Not that Peter has a problem with being seduced.  Carl is the one with the problem – shoving him furiously away when he had tries to make up in the night.  Peter often wonders how the hippy’s son grew up to be such a prude; for what it’s worth, he thinks  _the more the merrier_ , and he suspects that Lars would agree.  It’s a moot point as their sound engineer is out cold.  Carl could scream the whole city down – and how Peter would like to make him, shoving his mouth into the dirty pillows and grinding him down into the broken mattress – and it wouldn’t rouse Lars from the dead.   _Anyway_ , Peter mutters darkly in his friend’s ear,  _who gives a fuck if it does_ .  The violence with which Carl pushes him out of his bed insists that  _he_ does, very fucking much.

The problem with Carl is that he always cares what other people think.   _Not here Pete, not now, not in front of the children_ .  That’s all Peter ever gets in return for his love, his devotion, the songs ripped bleeding and beating from his heart.  He knows that Carl wants him – it is written in the way he clings to him when they are alone, pressing close enough to merge their flesh and bones, begging with broken pleas and eyes for Peter to take him and make him forget himself. 

But god forbid that Peter touch him in front of his wanky minor celebrity friends, who follow Carl about in a stream of alcohol and blind adoration.  Then Carl shrugs away his kisses and the touches he was so desperate for the night before.  Sometimes Peter wishes that he could show them – these scoffing, soulless, trendy fucks who look at him like he is nothing – what Carl looks like down on his knees, when he has begged to be put there.

The days and nights in France are bitter and cold with unvoiced arguments and the grudges itching beneath their skin.  Only Lars potters on happily, pressing buttons and looking solely delighted with the results. 

The music hisses and fizzes between them.  Carl blames Lars, but Peter knows that the broken sound is coming from the two of them.  The songs are sticky and sore, and he cannot bear the scrape of them on his skin.

Carl smokes and stares moodily out over the balcony.  He paces the tiny hotel room like a caged beast and strums twitchy fingers against guitar strings like prison bars.  He peers into the city lights below as if he would like to disappear into them.  If only he could be sad without being quite so aware of how he looks in profile, Peter might find it easier to believe him.

Peter understands that he is outliving his usefulness.  With his new band of wastrel brothers, all fake Burberry and fake talent, Carl doesn’t need him anymore.  He doesn’t need Peter to fill the long, dwindling evenings, or to push a guitar into despondent hands and tell him that he’s good.  The good old days of Peter kneeling at his feet, learning and reflecting back Carl’s brilliance, are long gone.

And now Carl looks at him – blue eyes sharp and cold as glass – and says  _I thought you wanted to write songs_ , as if that had ever been what he wanted.

 

* * * *

**  
**

**_The lost weekend, 2007_ **

 

Peter had only invited him here because he knew his friend would never come.  But he has, just to spite him.  Shivering on his doorstep, shrugging deeper into his leather jacket, sunglasses in the wintry afternoon.  And Peter wishes dearly that he hadn’t come.  He can see the same feeling reflected on Carl’s face as he stands at his door, but they are both aware that it is too late to back down now.

Carl looks all wrong here, and it is doing strange things to Peter’s head.  Someone has shaken up his world like a snow globe and he cannot make any sense of the figure sitting on his sofa, leather shifting uncomfortably against leather.

He feels like he is peering the wrong way down a seaside telescope: he has touched and tasted every inch of this man’s bare skin, and he could find his way around him in the dark; he has not seen him in the flesh in over a year. 

At the door, he looked exactly the same as the images stored in Peter’s brain – dark hair tickling his collar, chewed pink lips, black boots scuffing the ground.  Up close, Peter stares at an exposed patch of skin on the back of Carl’s neck – the tiny soft hairs standing up like thorns, skin just a patchwork of cells – and thinks he could be anyone.  He swallows down the tears that suddenly ache in the back of his throat. 

He suspects that dissolving into tears might just kick off the panic attack that is waiting in Carl’s hunched shoulders and twitching fingers.  Nothing cuts sharper or deeper in his boy than a visible display of distress, guilt turning him angry and sullen.  Peter knows that sometimes with Carl it is kinder to be cruel. 

‘Shall we get down to it then?’

‘Eh?’  Carl looks startled, as if he has been caught daydreaming in class.

Peter gestures at their waiting guitars.

‘That  _is_ what you came for, yeah?’ 

The question is innocent, delivered with his best wide-eyed look, and calculated to produce exactly that twist of anger in Carl’s face.  The insinuation in his words and face are flagrant, but he would deny them to the death.  He couldn’t say why he is so intent on provoking his friend.  The man who is, after all, actually  _here_ : in the same room with him, no media, no minders.  Perhaps it is just safe territory, this comfortable dance of petty hostilities. 

He only knows that they have been bickering since Carl arrived on his doorstep (alright, technically Lady Moss’s doorstep rather than  _his_ , but who’s keeping score).  Peter had started by mocking the giant dark glasses his friend was hiding behind, like a nervy starlet fleeing the paparazzi, and they have been throwing shadow punches ever since. 

Carl had griped about the empty fridge –  _supermodels_ , Peter had muttered with a shrug, having long since given up on finding anything more substantial than eye serum for an afternoon snack – and insisted on a mercy dash to the nearest off-license for emergency rations.  The contents of their clinking blue plastic bags pacified him briefly.  Peter has managed to coax him out of his leather shell and steal away the mirrored shades from his eyes.

All this time, their guitars have sat untouched.  They are propped delicately against each other, leaning up the wall like lovers.  Getting on far better than their owners.

Peter is fizzing with something he can’t name.  It is a feeling that he recognises from years ago, that he hates and misses desperately.  He needed a gesture from his friend – and had really thought that Carl showing up at his door would finally satisfy the gnawing, hungry ache – but it is not enough.  Not when he is like this, all wrapped up in careful restraint.

He needs a reaction.  He is past caring whether it comes as a smack in the face or a tongue down his throat. 

In the end, he gets both.

 

*

 

‘These songs, then.’

Carl shrugs slightly, not enough to unsettle Peter from his arms.  They lie on their backs, carpet prickling against bare skin, neither having the will or energy to make it to the bedroom. 

His friend inhales deeply on the cigarette that he has produced out of thin air. 

‘Next time.’

‘Yeah?'

Peter tries to keep the little word blank, to push down the blossoming hope in his chest.  Carl doesn’t answer; he reaches up to transfer the cigarette from the hot, close intimacy of his mouth to Peter’s smiling lips.

 

* * * *

 

**_Reunion_ ** **_, 2010_ **

 

‘Peter, I can’t possibly write songs now.’

He sighs and waits for Carl’s excuse of the day.  They haven’t done this for a long time; have barely been in the same room together, let alone in a position to play.  But he remembers the familiar steps, like a playground game of kiss-chase.

‘I don’t have a guitar.’  His friend grins smugly and returns his attention to the dark swirls of lager in his glass.  Fair enough, Peter has to admit that he has a point.  Their current lack of instruments is a problem.

It is, however, a problem that can be easily fixed.  There are guitars nearby, all tuned and ready, patiently awaiting the Libertines reunion press conference, together with the assembled murmuring press.

The two of them have snuck away to escape the rabble, and because Carl’s radar could sense a pub within a five-mile radius.  All he has to do now is coax the boy away from the pint that he is clinging to like a new best friend, return to the press conference that neither of them want to do, liberate a guitar or two, and somehow escape again to write the new Libertines hit record, all ideally before Carlos drinks himself unconscious.  Easy.

Fortunately, Peter doesn’t like easy solutions.  He craves a more romantic gesture – after all, the occasion seems to merit it.  Carlos is all dressed up like a boy on his first date; he is practically skipping around Peter like an eager puppy, and he wants to give him a treat.

So they go and buy each other guitars.  It seems the perfect answer to a day that is fraught with questions –  _Are you back together now?  Is everything forgiven?  Are you in it for love or money?_ – to cement their good will in strings and wood, the way it all began a hundred moons ago. 

Carl chooses something sleek and flashy; Peter picks a broken down Spanish guitar, pretty but a bit wrecked.  They can’t resist playing to type, together.  That is why Peter knows there’s more chance of their bass player smiling than there is of Carl actually sitting down to write a song with him.  And it’s probably why he feels compelled to lead them off on this little Libertines adventure. 

It is also why they find themselves – later, after the cameras have all closed their eyes, and the room has emptied – alone.  God knows how they shook off the entourage.  Peter has vague memories of Gary and John clambering into taxis, laden with excuses and bags, and the other bodies drifting conveniently away.  But then everyone around them has always wanted them to be alone, together, even more than they do.

It is why Carl ends up on his knees in front of him.  Peter grips a fistful of dark hair like a touchstone, grateful that the boy has let it grow longer again.   He doesn’t push Carl against the wall – because he has never cared about that, would do anything for Carlos, go under or over him – but his friend goes willingly.  Their moves are well rehearsed, coming back as easily as familiar chords beneath their fingers.

Their touches are raw, almost painful, desperate fingers and kisses like bruises.  Carl almost sobs when he pushes inside him – too soon, tense and unprepared, but nearly ready to come at the first, aching thrust – sinking into his clinging heat.  He clenches, steely soft, around him.  Peter whimpers in sympathy, matching the pained sounds that come from Carl, brow pressed against the cool wall, wet mouth gasping open.

They come in the same moment, or close enough, fast and messy, spilling over their party clothes and eager hands.  Peter collapses forward over his friend, knuckles locking together and hearts pounding through their pressed together bodies as one. 

Carl shifts under his fallen weight.  Peter pulls back, suddenly sore and sensitive – assuming that the boy wants to get away – but he only turns around to face him again, slumping back against the wall.  Peter can hardly make sense of the sight before him, a smear of melted colours and soft lines across the white paint: white shirt crumpled over golden skin, half-seeing blue eyes blinking slowly; he matches the tired smile that twitches over his friend’s pink mouth.

He feels unanchored, time and seas shifting around him; ten seconds and ten years ago blur into one.  He is kneeling at his friend’s feet, watching his clever fingers pluck music from guitar strings like a magic trick; they are playing in front of a line of cameras, struggling to find something that has slipped in between the gaps of their songs, aware of every glassy eye swallowing up their souls.

Just a few days ago, it seemed impossible that they would ever look at each other like this again – so close that their faces blur, still breathing in time, skin sticky with each other’s heat – and he knows absolutely, stony and certain in his chest, that they will never do it again.

Peter looks down at the military jacket surrendered on the floor, not the familiar soldier’s red and gold braid, but highwayman black.  He feels that he has just been robbed of something he hadn’t known he was carrying.  The loss weighs heavy and blank, like a pebble that has fallen out of his pocket.

 

* * * *

 

 

 ** _Thailand_ ** **_, 2015_ **

 

‘Let’s go down to the beach.’

This is his friend’s oldest trick.  They are both actually here, together, in this strange sunshine land.  It feels impossible and somehow magical.  But his infuriating boy is still trying to wriggle away.

Peter is still getting used to the alien sensation of heat on his skin, and happiness blooming beneath it.  He is trying hard to persuade himself that all this is more than a  dream.

He looks at the man who has travelled halfway across the world to sit next to him.   Carl doesn’t quite seem real and he keeps having to resist the urge to pinch him.  He doesn’t think his friend would take too kindly to that, and he doesn’t want the much mythologized third album to end in a punch up. 

The outfit isn’t helping Peter to believe in him – standard-issue Barat uniform of skinny jeans and leather, knuckle duster belt, incongruous against the sand and blue sky – as if he had been cut out of that week’s NME.  He is hardly dressed for a day at the beach.

‘Nah, too hot.  Let’s stay here and write.’

Carl brushes a hand over the neck of his guitar, as if he were actually considering it.  Peter sips on his drink and waits for the next parry.

‘Let’s go down to the lake then.  Be cooler, peaceful.  Put us in the right frame of mind.’

‘Carl!’  Peter tries very hard not to laugh.  ‘Let’s just pick up the fucking guitars and write some songs.’

‘Ah.  Okay.’  Carl busies himself fiddling with the strings, re-tuning his perfectly adjusted instrument.  Peter finds the boy maddening and adorable like this: all scared and tense, sulking in advance, shrinking away from the moment when he actually has to commit pen to paper.

His friend scowls at the guitar resting in Peter’s hands.  It comes from Wolfman and Carl had taken against the battered thing immediately, looking like he wanted to cast it straight into the sea in lieu of its owner.  Peter thinks of the ill-fated acoustic that Carl had brought him, neatly shattered into a thousand shards in its case on the way over.  It is still fragile, this thing that balances between them.

‘D’you want to go and-’

‘No.’  He can’t help laughing this time.  ‘Carlos.  Just come over here and write this sodding song with me.’

His friend moves then and Peter is foolish enough to believe that he is giving in.  The sudden weight of the boy on top of him knocks away his breath and guitar.  The strings twang reprovingly as wood clatters to the floor.

‘Let’s…’  Carl’s words are soft, pressed into skin.  He finishes the sentence with lips and teeth on Peter’s neck, hands sliding under his shirt, playing him like a familiar fret. 

 _This_ , thinks Peter, is his friend’s oldest trick.  And he will gladly fall for it every time.

 

* * * *


End file.
